The Price of Pain

Li Huowang let out a low laugh at the iron thing in front of him.

He shook his head, then began speaking to the wall beside him.

“Miaomiao, take Sui a little farther away. I know you can’t die in here, but let’s be safe anyway.”

“The fuck are you talking to?! Take off that Bluetooth headset!”

Li Huowang’s voice echoed in the slightly hollow stairwell, filled with exhaustion and barely contained pressure.

“You know what? I can’t feel any worse right now. I really, really want to find something to take it out on.”

Li Huowang turned his hand, and a sharp blade-tip slid out from his grip. His face twisted into a savage snarl in an instant. He stamped hard on the step and lunged at the three men like a starving beast.

Bang! Dots of blood bloomed across Li Huowang’s body. The familiar pain only made him more excited.

A flash of cold light—fingers, still gripping the pistol, tumbled through the air along with a spray of blood.

The man’s scream barely started before his vocal cords were severed in two, trembling in the air with a leaking hiss.

The sight stunned the remaining two. They clutched the girls in their arms tighter and screamed hysterically, “D-d-d-don’t come closer! We have hostages!”

“Tell that to the real cops! In your world, I’m a lunatic!”

Scalding blood gushed from the stump, soaking the soles of Li Huowang’s feet.

Without even glancing at the two girls who had wet themselves in terror, Li Huowang—a knife still stuck in his chest—climbed up the stairs, leaving bloody footprints. His voice, like a ghost’s wail, echoed through the stairwell.

“Yang Na! I’m sorry! I’m coming for you!”

Li Huowang searched the dorms one by one. When he reached the fourth floor, he saw the remaining four men.

Bleeding, Li Huowang tilted his head and stared fixedly at each of their necks.

Even though they held hostages and carried weapons, the momentum was not on their side against a Li Huowang like this.

Finally, one of the four, clearly the weakest-willed, abruptly let go of the girl in his arms and stammered, “C-c-comrade, can we surrender now? We really didn’t do anything! That bank robbery before, Brother Leopard forced me to do it! He’s the mastermind!”

Li Huowang yanked the dagger from his own body with his left hand, leaned forward, and charged at them with a mad laugh and streaming tears.

The difference between someone who has killed and someone who hasn’t is enormous.

Dark red blood dripped down the stairs, step by step.

Battered and covered in wounds, Li Huowang sat down heavily on two corpses, gasping for breath, feeling the pain all over his body.

His right arm—maybe the nerve or tendon was severed—could hardly lift anymore.

“Huo… Huowang?”

Hearing that familiar voice, Li Huowang’s body jolted violently. A sudden impulse surged through him: leave now, run as far and as fast as he could.

But when he remembered Bai Lingmiao, trapped in the Heart-Turbid, Li Huowang kept repeating “hallucination” in his mind as he slowly lifted his head toward the stairwell entrance.

It was Yang Na. She wore a delicate emerald earring on her right ear. Li Huowang remembered it—he had asked his mother to give it to Yang Na for her birthday.

“Wuwuwu… Huowang! Why are you so badly hurt!”

Tears streaming down her face, Yang Na rushed to Li Huowang’s side, helplessly staring at his bleeding wounds.

She tried to cover them with her hands, but couldn’t stop the flow.

“Fake… fake, it’s all fake,” Li Huowang muttered under his breath, his left hand tightening around the dagger.

Just as he raised the blade with a sudden jerk, Yang Na spoke.

“Why did you come to save me! You’re insane! Why did you come to save me! How am I supposed to forget you like this!”

“Ahhh—!” Li Huowang felt the dagger in his hand weighing like a thousand pounds. Her words nearly shattered him completely.

Feeling a heart-wrenching pain, Li Huowang summoned every shred of his will and drove the dagger’s tip into Yang Na’s chest. The sharp edge cut through her purple tight-fitting sweater, and through her skin.

Feeling the pain in her chest, Yang Na blinked, trembling, and looked at Li Huowang. There was no fear, no disappointment, no resentment in her eyes—only an overwhelming sense of grievance. “Huowang… why?”

Her eyes stabbed into Li Huowang’s heart like a knife. No—it hurt far, far more than that.

Just as he was about to push harder in utter despair, he suddenly felt a burning pain in his throat, like a flame licking at him. The pain grew more and more intense, until everything around him seemed to destabilize.

Clang. The dagger fell from Li Huowang’s hand to the floor. The agony made his body shake uncontrollably.

Forgetting her own chest wound, Yang Na immediately threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around the reeling Li Huowang and pulling him into her embrace.

Bang. Everything around him vanished in an instant. Li Huowang was back in that pitch-black forest.

He was on his knees. Before him was the red bamboo slip—the Thousand Greats Record. Something seemed to be wrapped inside it.

Just then, a tongue lolled out from between the bamboo slips, and it began to speak. The Thousand Greats Record was alive.

“One tongue turns the wheel! One lash spans the cosmos! The wondrous realms and ultimate poles cannot be spoken! The heavens delight in the strange and the divine—how dare any profane them! Our lord is supreme! How dare you disturb!”

Hearing the voice of the Thousand Greats Record, Li Huowang felt all his senses begin to merge again, merging into that bizarre perception that could sense Bashe.

Under this perception, Li Huowang could hear that the Thousand Greats Record was alive.

He touched the red bamboo slips as they transformed into red, writhing maggots.

In a daze, Li Huowang looked up. The pitch-black canopy above seemed to split open, and a single long, thin, misty eyeball—almost larger than the sky itself—peered in through the crack.

That wasn’t Bashe. Li Huowang could feel Bashe, but it was far away. It was still in the White Jade Capital.

The eyeball dissolved. Li Huowang could feel Bashe again—or rather, he saw Bashe.

This time, he could feel that part of his own sensation had begun to overlap with its body.

An overwhelmingly intense wave of pain descended from the heavens, intertwining with Li Huowang’s own pain, and began to spread outward.

Soon, everything around was covered by this pain—not just Bai Lingmiao and the mutated humans.

Even the trees, even the soil, even the air itself began to tremble slightly.

As Li Huowang raised his hands slightly, all the pain intensified. And these new waves of pain could be controlled by him.

Li Huowang’s fused senses smelled two eyeballs—one black, one white. They were intertwined, each inside the other.

They had no boundaries. The edges simply canceled each other out, and he himself was inside that sphere.

Li Huowang raised his hands again, peeling away all his own pain and pouring it into those two spheres.